OF A GOLDEN AGE

This is my favorite xkcd ever and is drawing a strong reaction from me, since gossip is the one topic that unifies people who otherwise vocally dislike what their peers may study or pursue. Seriously, if one more person finds out I like math and says “Oh, god, I hate math,” I am going to sock that person. The same goes for the next person who says “Oh, jeez, an English major, what’s that good for?”

You know what it’s good for? Keeping your brain alive and connecting to humanity at any point in history and in any country or culture in the world, that’s what. Failing to draw sharp-sided lines in the sand by finding an objective definition for everything, failing to declare total certainty about life’s most unknowable concepts, realizing that sometimes phrases can evoke certain ineffable human feelings better than anything else, and drawing analogies to unify or illustrate, that’s goddamned what.

After I glimpsed Pekar at the book fair (see previous post), I stood at attention for the next hour and a half knowing he’d eventually be back. The coordinator came back to ask if I wanted to be rotated, but of course I was waiting to see Harvey Pekar again. She said, “Oh, come upstairs and meet him!”

Pekar and his editor, Paul Buhle, were in the hospitality room and we talked for a few minutes before they had to go downstairs for their panel discussion. I also met Bucky Halker, a Wisconsin-born singer-songwriter and labor academic who reminds me of Jeff Bridges circa Fearless (tall, thin, runaway hair, piercing blue eyes) and serves on the Woody Guthrie Foundation board.

At past Printers Rows, Studs Terkel presented his own program, but at this first one since his death in October they invited Pekar and Buhle to discuss their recent graphication of portions of Terkel’s most famous book, Working. Really, Pekar and Terkel are cut of the same cloth: both are magnetic personalities (though Pekar has great social anxiety) who spend their lives discussing the overlooked “ordinary” people who populate most of the world. By holding these people’s stories up to the light, we can give them the attention they deserve — not by romanticizing, or making them unhealthily famous (Cough . . . Susan Boyle?), but by acknowledging that everyone plays a part.

Because of the draw of Studs Terkel (especially in Chicago) and Pekar’s elevated profile since 2003’s great movie adaptation of American Splendor, CSPAN’s Book TV broadcast the panel live. In this context I felt more self conscious as the loudest laugher. Whoops.

. . . Really?:

The slightly insane but entertaining zenith of this cheesy melodrama was the 1985 publication of the graphic novel God Loves, Man Kills, a morality play about racial discrimination in which passages from the Bible are quoted and the leader of the X-Men, Professor X, is crucified on top of the World Trade Center.

From the aptly titled “Wolverine is Ridiculous,” today on Slate.

Selections of this article are making me laugh like a crazy person.

According to his new biography, Wolverine has been, at various times, a Canadian cowboy, a ninja, a private eye, a secret agent, a bootlegger, a mercenary, a bodyguard, a caveman, a victim of the Holocaust, a Vietnam vet, a World War II vet, a corrupt cop, and a lumberjack.

And this last one:

Oh, and he’s saddled with five children. (One died in utero, one is an evil clone.)

From today’s Overcompensating:

Baby Lamé: Jeffrey you got to get a leash for that cat!
Jeffrey: PFFT . . . Leashes are for sex parties and children with ADHD.

Marty reminded me that Achewood ran a great series of strips on Subway-to-Subway competition.

From Jeffrey Rowland’s journal comic Overcompensating:

“As we crawl closer to the president voting day, I know some of you are still undecided.

“That’s stupid.

“What is wrong with you?”

YES! THANK YOU PAJIBA!

My favorite capturing statement: “I don’t know whether Bruce Wayne will ultimately save Gotham City, but I know that there are no circumstances under which I’d want to live there.”

Hellboy 2 is what Indiana Jones 4 should have been.

And Ironman completely blows The Dark Knight away in every way except Heath Ledger as the Joker. Seriously, people.

It’s always good and cleverly written, but today’s XKCD is downright amazing.

Dustin at Pajiba reviewed the new comic-book adaptation Wanted under this title:

I Want to Fuck This Movie.

He’s right. This is a ridiculous, fantastic, eyeball-burning movie. I know nothing about the comic (except what I read on Wikipedia) so I definitely can’t speak to its loyalty, but. Wanted stands alone as a great example of an entire genre of action movies: Honest to god, they don’t make one lick of sense, but their plots remain cohesive and glue you to your seat. It’s mysterious. I like it.

The funny thing is, I almost always dislike or feel indifferent toward action movies, especially when they involve regular, bloody violence. (Wanted features plenty, and often in slow motion no less.) This is more an issue of style though; camerawork, clever effects, and clipped, well-delivered dialogue pull the plot up from a mere shoot-’em-up.

Also: James McAvoy, charming as the slightly dirty mystery suitor in Penelope and convincing as Wanted’s cubicle jockey “growing a pair,” is one of the best casting jobs in recent memory.

When the credits rolled, my packed theater of Sunday-afternoon suburban people broke out into applause.